Maturin M. Ballou

Maturin Murray Ballou (April 14, 1820 – March 27, 1895) was an American writer and publisher in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts. He co-founded Gleason's Pictorial, was the first editor of the Boston Daily Globe, and wrote numerous travel books and works of popular fiction.

1820s–1840s

Ballou was born in Boston in 1820, to parents Hosea Ballou and Ruth Washburn. He attended The English High School, and although he passed the entrance exam for Harvard College, he did not attend. He married Mary Anne Roberts on September 15, 1839; children included Murray Roberts Ballou (b. 1840).

Starting around 1838, Ballou wrote for the Olive Branch, a weekly paper published in Boston. In addition to writing, he worked various jobs for the Boston Post Office, 1839 and the Boston Custom House, ca. 1845. From 1842 through 1844, Ballou and Isaac H. Wright published the weekly newspaper Bay State Democrat. Writing under the pseudonym Lieutenant Murray, Ballou authored popular novels which were published by Frederick Gleason starting around 1845, such as The Gipsey, or, the Robbers of Naples: a Story of Love and Pride. He also wrote stories for The Flag of Our Union.

1850s

In 1851, Ballou and Frederick Gleason established the weekly paper Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion. It was inspired by The Illustrated London News. The first issue appeared on May 3, 1851, and declared: "The object of this paper is to present, in the most elegant and available form, a weekly literary melange of notable events of the day. Its columns are devoted to original tales, sketches, and poems, by the best American authors, and the cream of the domestic and foreign news; the whole well spiced with wit and humor." In November 1854, Ballou bought out Gleason and changed the paper's name to Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion.